BOINC
I don’t know whether any of you are familiar with SETI@home, but you might want to check out BOINCas a great new-generation version of distributed computing.
Basically, BOINC installs a tiny client on your machine and allocates your computing resources to scientific research when your computer is idle. Many scientific studies require processing of intense amounts of data (terabytes and terabytes), and a great way to achieve this without millions of dollars worth of supercomputer is to distribute parcels of data to millions of PC’s worldwide.
The BOINC home page lists several interesting projects that you can participate in, including SETI itself, Climate prediction, the Large Hadron Collider (particle accelerator) at CERN, human disease research, etc.
Why not take part in all of them like I do. It’s free, it makes a great screensaver and it actually helps out the scientific community. Wins all around!
If you join SETI via BOINC, feel free to join my Team, The Gnolls of BlackBurrow.
Check it out!
